The 189-room hotel, which will also offer 127 serviced residences, will be linked to the region’s flagship Cleveland Clinic via sky-link.

“The medical centre I think is a new market for Abu Dhabi and this is brand new infrastructure – it has 400 beds — and we feel that could be a very good USP for us,” said Romaniello.

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He added that the hotel, the first hotel being developed by Mubadala on Al Maryah Island, formerly known as Sowwah Island, would also target thousands of people expected to be employed in the island’s business district.

“Our location is very favourable in that we are at the heart of the business centre of Abu Dhabi — right in front of the Abu Dhabi mall my ownership [Mubadala] has developed an island [Al Maryah island, formerly Sowwah Island] and established the new Abu Dhabi stock exchange there; we forecast occupying about 12,000 people in those towers.

“And I’m also connected to the Cleveland Clinic [opening end 2013] — we have a sky link, the patients will have a golf cart to our hotel, we’ll be able to room the families while the patients get their care. So we do have a couple of captive audiences within our market,” he observed.

Romaniello added: “We have a wonderful retail component below us that is called the Galleria being built with 110 shops, along with the spa, with the 11 F&B venues, with the shopping, with the business — the high point of energy that it has — we feel that we can get a great business and leisure clientele”.